Quant BuffetRelax, Not Over Thinking

Overnight-Intraday Weekly Reversal in Interest Rate Futures

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Academic paper

Market Closure and Short-Term Reversal

AuthorsPasquale Della Corte; Robert Kosowski; Tianyu Wang

Institute
  • Centre for Economic Policy Research
  • ?Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR)
  • ?Imperial College Business School
  • University of Oxford
  • Quantitative BioSciences
  • ?CEPR (Centre for Economic Policy Research)
  • ?University of Oxford, Oxford-Man Institute of Quantitative Finance
  • Tsinghua University
  • ?Tsinghua University, School of Economics and Management

Strategy in a nutshell

The strategy focuses on 11 major interest rate futures, including Federal Funds, Eurodollar, and U.S. Treasury contracts, using TickData open and close prices.

Formation: Identify winners and losers from Friday close to Monday open.

Portfolio construction: Go long past losers and short past winners.

Weighting: Contracts are weighted using formulas from the referenced academic paper.

Holding period: Monday open → Friday close (weekly cycle).

Rebalancing: Performed weekly.

This creates a zero-investment long-short portfolio exploiting short-term inefficiencies.

Economic rationale

Investor overreaction → Price corrections follow sharp moves around market closures.

Low liquidity periods → Overnight/weekend closures amplify uncertainty and volatility.

Hedging demands → As shown by Hong and Wang (2000), shifts in hedging during closures drive reversals.

Nagel (2012) finds the Close-to-Open (CO-OC) reversal stronger in futures than stocks, making this setup particularly profitable.

The result is a systematic strategy capturing predictable weekly reversals in interest rate futures.

Backtest performance

Annualised return6.88%
Volatility8.44%
Beta0.002
Sharpe ratio0.81
Sortino ratio-6.567
Win rate35%

Full Python code

from AlgorithmImports import *
class OvernightIntradayWeeklyReversalInterestRate(QCAlgorithm):
def Initialize(self):
 self.SetStartDate(2000, 1, 1)
 self.SetCash(100000)
 
 self.symbols = [
     "CME_TY1",      # 10 Yr Note Futures, Continuous Contract #1
     "CME_FV1",      # 5 Yr Note Futures, Continuous Contract #1
     "CME_TU1"       # 2 Yr Note Futures, Continuous Contract #1
     "CME_ED1",      # Eurodollar Futures, Continuous Contract #1
     "CME_FF1",      # 30-Day Fed Funds Futures, Continuous Contract #1
     "CME_US1"       # US Treasury Bond Futures, Continuous Contract #1
     "CME_UT1"       # US Ultra T-Bond Bond Futures, Continuous Contract #1                        
 ]
 
 self.friday_close = {}
 self.leverage = 1
 
 for symbol in self.symbols:
     data = self.AddData(QuantpediaFutures, symbol, Resolution.Daily)
     data.SetFeeModel(CustomFeeModel())
     data.SetLeverage(5)
     self.friday_close[symbol] = 0
 
 self.settings.minimum_order_margin_portfolio_percentage = 0.
def OnData(self, data):
 # Saturday -> Friday close available
 if self.Time.date().weekday() == 5:
     for symbol in self.symbols:
         if symbol in data and data[symbol]:
             price = data[symbol].Value
             if price != 0:
                 self.friday_close[symbol] = price
             
     self.Liquidate()
 # Tuesday -> Monday close available
 elif self.Time.date().weekday() == 1:
     returns = {}
     
     for symbol in self.symbols:
         # Check if data is still coming.
         if self.securities[symbol].get_last_data() and self.time.date() > QuantpediaFutures.get_last_update_date()[symbol]:
             self.liquidate(symbol)
             continue
         if symbol in data and data[symbol]:
             price = data[symbol].Value
             if price != 0 and symbol in self.friday_close and self.friday_close[symbol] != 0:
                 returns[symbol] = price / self.friday_close[symbol] - 1
     
     self.friday_close.clear()
     if len(returns) == 0: 
         return
     
     ret_mean = np.mean([x[1] for x in returns.items()])
     
     weight = {}
     N = len(returns)
     for symbol in returns:
         weight[symbol] = -(1/N) * (returns[symbol] - ret_mean) * 100

     for symbol in weight:
         if data.contains_key(symbol) and data[symbol]:
             self.SetHoldings(symbol, self.leverage * weight[symbol])
# Quantpedia data.
# NOTE: IMPORTANT: Data order must be ascending (datewise)
class QuantpediaFutures(PythonData):
_last_update_date:Dict[Symbol, datetime.date] = {}
@staticmethod
def get_last_update_date() -> Dict[Symbol, datetime.date]:
return QuantpediaFutures._last_update_date
def GetSource(self, config, date, isLiveMode):
 return SubscriptionDataSource("data.quantpedia.com/backtesting_data/futures/{0}.csv".format(config.Symbol.Value), SubscriptionTransportMedium.RemoteFile, FileFormat.Csv)
def Reader(self, config, line, date, isLiveMode):
 data = QuantpediaFutures()
 data.Symbol = config.Symbol
 
 if not line[0].isdigit(): return None
 split = line.split(';')
 
 data.Time = datetime.strptime(split[0], "%d.%m.%Y") + timedelta(days=1)
 data['back_adjusted'] = float(split[1])
 data['spliced'] = float(split[2])
 data.Value = float(split[1])
 if config.Symbol.Value not in QuantpediaFutures._last_update_date:
     QuantpediaFutures._last_update_date[config.Symbol.Value] = datetime(1,1,1).date()
 if data.Time.date() > QuantpediaFutures._last_update_date[config.Symbol.Value]:
     QuantpediaFutures._last_update_date[config.Symbol.Value] = data.Time.date()
     
 return data
# Custom fee model.
class CustomFeeModel(FeeModel):
def GetOrderFee(self, parameters):
 fee = parameters.Security.Price * parameters.Order.AbsoluteQuantity * 0.00005
 return OrderFee(CashAmount(fee, "USD"))